Dentists. Do I really need to say more? They’re the most reviled of all health care professionals and because of it they have the highest suicide rate of any profession. They rarely listen to us, they poke and prod up with sharp things, and they tend to have that delightful “I’m better than all of you fucks” attitude.

So I went to see mine again yesterday because the pain any time I drank something was just about enough to make me come out of my skin. It didn’t feel like it was coming from the new filling. He sat me down and asked a bit about what was going on and then started blasting my teeth with cold air. When he got to the one with the filling I about came out of the chair. It is indeed the culprit.

Apparently when you have a tooth that’s more silver than tooth, it gets sensitive to hot and cold. Super sensitive. So he told me that this could take anywhere from another few days to a few months to go away. He suggested a toothpaste made for sensitive teeth. And then he said if I really couldn’t stand it that he’d pull it.

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? THAT’S WHAT I WANTED IN THE FIRST FUCKING PLACE!!!

So I told him I’ll try the toothpaste and see how it goes. I’ve got an appointment to get another tooth filled on 2/11. If this one is still making me crazy when that appointment comes up then I’ll have him pull it.

But I know damn good and well that I’ll be stuck paying for both the filling and the extraction when what I fucking asked for was just the extraction. Lousy fucking dentists.

Which brings me to another topic from the list – why I am always fucking broke. Seems like every time I think I’m about to get my shit back together and have a few extra dollars I have some kind of medical emergency and get stuck with a whole new set of bills to pay. It doesn’t help that Josh makes 1/4 what I do a month. This month we have the usual medical bills to contend with, groceries – that boy eats A LOT, and now tuition. Since Josh didn’t get signed up for classes right away he only got into one class. One class does not qualify you for financial aid. I’m stuck paying for the one class, which he may very well fail anyway.

On to the Seroquel…

I had utterly terrible dreams the other night. I hate dreaming, it creeps me out. When I was first diagnosed the asshat psych doc I was seeing had me on 800mg of Seroquel a day. I didn’t dream at all. I ate everything in sight and couldn’t plaster a smile on my face with a putty knife, but damn did I sleep. Of course I woke up with a hangover worse than any booze bender I’d ever been on. But I slept.

I don’t remember what else I was going to write about and I can’t be bothered to go look now.

Last night ended up alright. After I got home from the dentist Josh and I had it out for a bit. I yelled, quite a bit, and then I settled down. We talked a bit, made up, and then took a shower together. I made him cook his own dinner, which was very nice for me. I spent the rest of the evening on the sofa watching tv shows that I actually enjoy.

Sadly I gave myself heartburn with my dinner and didn’t sleep great last night. It was better than Sunday night, but still not super. Must be going around – I just got an email from my boss saying she’ll be in late because she overslept.

At any rate, I’m a little tired and a lot not in a mood to deal with Josh. He was his usual non-communicative self again this morning and I just really want no part of it. I’ve got 2 more meetings to deal with today before I leave early to go see the eye doctor. It’s time to get new contacts and my Rx has expired. I’m really hoping to get a good enough tax return to be able to buy a few boxes of new lenses.

The mood is pretty level right now. I’m not too up or too down, but tired. I’m hoping to be able to get some stuff done today and then relax tonight. Josh will be in school and my mom is staying with my sister while her husband is out of town so I’ll have the whole house to myself all evening. Kind of sounds like my idea of heaven.

I’m about at the end of my rope with humanity. I realize it’s Monday. I realize I didn’t sleep well because of terrible nightmares. I realize Josh is not known for being a decent human being. But why for the love of all that is holy is all of this bullshit happening at once???

I got maybe 3 hours of sleep last night. I started having nightmares early on and continued until around 2:30. I’ve trained my brain to wake up when that shit gets too bad, so I woke up and laid awake until Josh’s alarm started going off at 4:30. I got up when he did and tried to shake the cobwebs from my brain. I told him I hadn’t slept well because of the dreams. He left for work.

When he got to work and started texting me he started right in on having sex tonight. We’re talking like the very first message after the one telling me he’d arrived he started this shit. It’s continued all goddamn morning.

I had a customer call with a problem. I couldn’t get into her course right away because she’s tied to about 100 of them. She told me what she thought had happened and that she’d call back after class. Come to find that she brought the problem on herself by her own stupidity. She called back, I told her what she’d done, she asked to come over. Fifteen minutes later I call the other office – she’s there. I told them what she’d done and they took care of her. So fucking stupid.

Josh called at lunch. More with the sex. I finally asked him what the big fucking deal was and why he felt it necessary to start in on me first thing. “I thought it would help make you feel better.” SERIOUSLY? Oh yeah, nothing makes a bad day better than being fucked into a good mood. And then he asked me about the nightmares! I’ve spent the better part of the last 8 hours trying to repress that shit, but by all means, let’s drag it up so I can be traumatized some more.

And my tooth still hurts. Actually I guess I should say my mouth still hurts. A tooth a few spots up from the one they worked on is still super sensitive to hot and cold. I’ve called and gotten an appointment for 3pm this afternoon. I have no idea what this means but I’m miserable. I can’t really chew on that side of my mouth and any time something hot or cold touches that area I want to scream.

So really, if anyone out there cares about me, get a sniper to take me out this afternoon. Pretty please?

Maybe I’m giving myself too much credit, but I think the brat wants to be like me. The thought of that scares the living shit out of me.

Her mom has been doing this thing with her where if she earns so many gold stars she gets to do something. So far she’s gone shopping for a new outfit, put blue streaks in her hair, and gotten her ears pierced a second time. Seems a bit much for a 9 year old. What troubles me is that I had purple hair for awhile when I first met her. And apparently I’m the only person she knows who has more than one set of holes in their ears.

Coincidence? Makes you wonder.

But seriously, I am not a role model. I’ve made a whole lot of poor choices over the course of my short life. I started drinking and smoking when I was 11. Started having sex at 13. Came home pregnant while I was a freshman in high school. Got married at 18. Went through a period when I drank myself unconscious every night. Have had so many sexual partners I’ve lost count and forgotten at least half the names, let alone the faces. I’ve tried to kill myself 5 times. I’ve gotten myself so far into debt that I’m still digging out.

I say again – I am NOT a role model.

Sure, I have a few redeeming qualities. When I want to use my brain I’m fairly smart. Some would say I’m attractive. I’m proud of the fact that I’m witty. I’ve managed to hold down a full time job the entire time I’ve been ill. I’ve bounced back so many times from so many unpleasant things that it makes me wonder if my butt isn’t part rubber.

But I am NOT a role model.

It scares me to think that someone would want to be like me. What’s so fucking great about me? I live in a basement, I’m married to a lazy alcoholic, I’m still way further in debt than I should be…

What is so fucking fantastic about me?

I try to be a good person and take care of the people closest to me. I’m a hard worker and I always try to do my best, no matter what I’m doing. I’m trying to leave this world just a little better than it was when I came into it.

I was never one of the “cool” kids in school. I always had my own warped fashion sense and I did the things I wanted to do because I wanted to do them, not because everyone else was doing them. I have always marched to the beat of my own drummer. I’m me, what can I say.

But for the love of all that is holy – DO NO TRY TO BE LIKE ME!!!

Each of us is our own person. We’re all unique in our own ways. Don’t emulate me or try to be like me, be like you. Love who “you” is. Embrace that. Don’t embrace my bullshit, it won’t work for you. I’ve gone through a whole lot of hell to get where I am – don’t follow the path I took, it sucked. My life is not worth living to anyone but me. Everything I’ve ever gotten I’ve worked my ass off for. I’ve made just about every mistake a woman can make. Don’t be like me, be like you.

I actually cried last night trying to explain this to Josh. For some unknown reason it matters to that brat if I like her or not. WTF??? Who am I? I’m just some woman who married her father, I’m not a goddamn saint that needs to be put on a pedestal. Don’t be like me!!!

Half the time being me sucks ass. The other half the time I’m so out of my goddamn mind that I just don’t realize how much it sucks. I wake up every day knowing that a battle royale awaits me outside the bedroom door. I fight for every fucking inch I gain and then somedays I lose entire feet, yards, miles. Do not try to be like me, you won’t enjoy it.

“But honey, you’re smart and attractive and funny and you’re good to people.”

It’s called being a fucking doormat and it’s not a good thing to be. And by the way, I’m not attractive so shut the fuck up.

And I don’t feel like I should have to have this conversation with a 9 year old child. There are things about my life that I would rather she never know, it’s none of her fucking business. I understand that we all need to find ways to rebel against our parents and express ourselves, I just don’t want to see her making the same mistakes I made when I went down that road.

And she’s not my kid. There’s no blood shared between us so there’s absolutely no logical reason to think she’ll be anything like me except for the fact that she’s already starting to express herself in the same exact ways that I did only she’s younger and that just fucking scares me. What if she gets sick and does stupid things like I did? What if there’s some way that my fucked-up-ness rubs off on her and she ends up making a disaster of her life too just because she’s spent some time with me? I just can’t live with that. It’s too fucking scary. I won’t take responsibility for ruining someone’s life. That is the precise reason I never had kids of my own – I didn’t want to be saddled with the responsibility of another soul.

I did ALL of the chores, all by myself this weekend. No help from king asshole at all. I cooked all of the meals and cleaned up everything after them. I was the one who had to get the brat some Motrin because she has yet another headache.

“I’ll help you honey, you know I will.”

BULLSHIT.

I’m not her mother, and I’m not his mother. I’m a grown woman who chose not to have children because to me they are just big fucking leeches. They suck up your food and your time and your money and they give you nothing in return. Thanks, I’ll just get myself a gold fish next time I feel lonely.

He thinks he’s coming home to have sex. WRONG. I’m tired from having had to be “on” all fucking weekend and I’m really not in the mood to deal with him. I’ll cook dinner and clean up after myself, but I have every intention of hiding the rest of the night.

He just thinks all of this is so fucking easy for me just because I don’t have a goddamn meltdown every time she comes over. I fucking hate having her here. Why can’t he just give her up and let her mom deal with her all the time? Why do I have to be tortured like this??? Don’t I work hard during the week? Don’t I deserve to have a nice weekend to myself? Haven’t I fucking earned that?

I want to unleash on him when he comes home. I want to fucking yell at him for everything he’s ever done to me. I want to smack him across the face so hard it leaves a mark.

But I won’t.

I warned him that when the time came I’d just get quiet. That time has come. Prepare for the insufferable sound of silence.

It’s just past 10:30am. The brat is still asleep. I have no idea how late she stayed up last night. I went to bed at 9:30 when my pills kicked in. I don’t so much care I guess, it just makes me wonder if she’s having trouble falling asleep. She might take after Josh and that would be a terrible thing.

The weekend hasn’t sucked too bad so far. I’ve been making quite a bit of knitting progress, as evidenced by the pics I posted earlier this morning. The brat seems to be behaving for the most part, except when it comes to food. I don’t know as I’ve ever encountered a pickier eater. I made homemade pizza last night and she completely picked it apart. I should have just given her a plate of shredded cheese – that’s really all she ate off it.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – kids just totally piss me off.

Anyway, I’m going back to my knitting. The mood is actually pretty good, all things considered. Josh and I have already had breakfast and taken our shower and I’ve worked 2 more rows on the vest. Looks like it should be a pretty quiet and productive day for me.

I’ve been watching rather a lot of television today. Enough to come to the conclusion that women are obsessed with 3 things – makeup, shoes, and how fat they are. I’d just like to state for the record that I’m obsessed with none of these. I am, however, very much a woman. Just listen to me roar.

I’ve never been big into makeup, even when I was a young woman and it was “the” thing to do. I never had a vast collection of powders and potions to apply to my face. I think I may have worn foundation once. These days it is a rare occurrence indeed that I decide a situation warrants a little eye shadow and some mascara.

I just don’t get it. Makeup these days rarely, if ever, looks natural. What’s wrong with your face the way it is? I rather like my face, thank you very much. I don’t ever feel the need to spackle my skin with layers of goo and powder and apply unnatural looking colors to my eyelids and wear ridiculously long fake eyelashes. Nope, that’s just not me.

My skin regimen consists of washing – once a day, in the shower, and I have 3 products I rotate through – one per day. I’ve found the hard way that continual use of any one of them is too much for my finicky skin but rotating like this seems to provide me with a healthy glow.

Shoes. Where to begin. Don’t get me wrong – I’ve got more shoes than I can comfortably wear in a week. Like I said, I am still a woman. I just don’t get all excited about shoes that aren’t comfortable. I don’t give a flying fuck how cute they are – if they hurt my feet I’m putting them in the garbage. I always look at comfort first when I look for new shoes. I tend to pay more for my shoes because I have huge feet, but I also generally get shoes that last more than one season. I’m frugal with my money.

Weight. Jesus fucking christ. Is there a woman on this planet who doesn’t obsess about her weight? Yes, ME, right here. I’m fat and I love my body. There, I said it. I wear 2X tops and size 20 pants and I’m 5’6″ tall and I weigh somewhere in the neighborhood of 260lbs. I’M FAT. But you know what? I’M HAPPY. I love this body. It’s good to me when I’m good to it and really, what more can you ask for. Don’t give me this bullshit about “I just know I’ll be happy when I lose that last 20 lbs.” BULLSHIT. If that’s your attitude you ain’t never gonna be happy.

Love who you are. Love what you look like. Take care of yourself so you’re healthy. Be nice to your body and it will most likely be nice to you.

Now, go wash that crap off your face, put on some slippers, and for fuck’s sake – go eat some chocolate.

As best I can tell, I’ve been dealing with my mental illness since I was about 9 years old. I don’t think I’ve ever really had “normal” moods. As soon as I hit puberty and the hormones started flowing I’ve been very emotional. I was pretty well always either really really up or really really down – very little in between.

I was finally diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder II when I was 29 years old. I started taking Lithium to regulate my moods. I’ve taken various things with it since then. Right now I take 1500mg of Lithium and 100mg of Geodon to stabilize my moods. After nearly 7 years it’s finally really working.

I was thinking back over the last few months and realized that while I’m not completely normal yet, things are looking to get there very shortly.

Most days anymore I don’t have much of a mood at all, I just kind of exist. Things outside of me will make me happy or sad, but the moods rarely seem to come from something inside me anymore. This is a very good thing.

But it’s weird for me. What happened to my really great moods where I’d soar with the eagles? What happened to my really bad moods where I’d feel like I was trapped in the depths of hell?

They’re gone. Replaced by normal bits of up and down.

It takes some getting used to, this “normal” thing. On the plus side, I feel like I’m more productive than I’ve ever been. On the down side, I don’t tend to get too excited about much of anything. I’m still able to enjoy life when it should be enjoyable, don’t get me wrong. It’s just not as vibrant as it once was.

Please don’t think for one minute that this means I’m going to go off my meds – that just won’t happen. I rather enjoy being more in control of what’s going on with my moods. It’s just interesting from an intellectual perspective.

And it makes me wonder how much more I would have been able to achieve by now had I gotten a diagnosis when I was younger. Would I already have my PhD? Would I have felt like I was able to have children? Would I have been able to live on my own by now?

Life is full of “what if” for all of us, but especially so for those of us with broken brains.

And now that I do have this “normal” thing coming on, I have to start thinking “what can I do with this gift?” What can I go out and achieve now?

It’s not too late. It’s never too late. Go. Go out and seize your life. Make it what you want it to be. Find it, do it. Go forth and be AWESOME.

Yesterday was actually a really good day, like all the way around, 100% really good. That happens so seldom anymore that I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it never did. YAY!

I’m still not sleeping that great so I got up at 4:45 this morning. I felt alright and started getting things done. I worked on WeeGee’s sock for awhile, folded and put away a load of laundry I started last night, made the bed, tidied our space, wove the ends in on the last washcloth, finished the row I started on the vest yesterday morning, and started another load of laundry. Who says insomnia isn’t a good thing?

Yesterday I managed to get that entire to do list done and then some. I was actually done with the list by about 10am. I spent most of the rest of the day doing other misc things. It felt good to be so productive. This morning I teach – if anyone shows up – and then I have a meeting over lunch to discuss a new training series we’re going to offer this summer. This afternoon I have an appointment with a faculty member to discuss our course management system. Hopefully today goes fast.

I’m really not looking forward to this weekend, but I never do when the brat comes over. We have no money to do anything with her and I know that frustrates Josh to no end. Sorry, can’t really do anything about that. If she wants to do something she’ll have to make do with the supplies we have on hand. I plan to knit as much as possible and work on my home to do list. I already got that started last night with the laundry, which I’m hoping helps. I tend to prefer to get all of my chores done before I start relaxing.

Josh and I were getting along really well. No fights or problems yesterday at all. Today he’s back where he can’t talk except at breaks and I’m fairly sure I’ll miss all of those. I guess you can’t really fight if you can’t talk, so maybe this is a good thing.

The mood seems to be pretty good. I’ve got one other project I need to be working on but it would be infinitely easier to do in my real office. I could technically do it here, but it would involve a whole lot of switching back and forth between screens. Maybe this afternoon I’ll mess with it a little bit.

I wish I knew what the deal was with my ear. It doesn’t look infected but it sure hurts. I’m guessing if I took the earring out that it would heal up, but I really like having an earring there. I did switch to hypoallergenic gold hoops thinking that would help, but it’s still tender.

I’ll try to post some pics of something over the weekend. I still need to weave the ends in on the brat’s mitts before she shows up tomorrow. WeeGee’s sock finally looks like something. The vest still looks like a mess, but I’m thinking it probably will until it’s done. I’m just glad my knitting mojo seems to be back. Now I just need to get back to work on Mom’s sock and get it done.